Asva`s Second Album Is a New Frontier

Asva - What You Don`t Know Is Frontier

As the title suggests, Asva`s second album maps an internal landscape - wild, vast, open - at once breathtakingly beautiful as it is potentially dangerous. A psychogeographical vista of mountain highs, barren rolling plains and oceanic lows.


Helmed by Stuart Dahlquist, formerly of Burning Witch, Goatsnake, and Sunn0))), and recorded with the cream of the Pacific Northwest`s rich musical talent, including members of Burning Witch, Mr. Bungle, and Earth. What You Don`t Know Is Frontier is a lyricless album of immense personal meaning to its creator, giving a very real sense of catharsis for both listener and performers alike. But there`s also real hope and resolution at its core.




"...Frontier shows you another way of thinking about life; a bona fide piece of art..." 9/10
- Terrorizer, album of the month


"Like Carl Orff covering Winter... It reminds me of the first time I heard Mozart’s Requiem, or Gould’s Goldberg Variations. The music has a punishing sort of beauty, an inflicted aesthetics that hands the hearer no choice."
- Oaken Throne zine


"Vast yet intimate, its slo-mo soundscapes resonate with decaying guitar bombast, desolate organ and wracked, wordless female vocals." 4/5
- MOJO



www.southern.net/asva
www.myspace.com/asvaband

Album Of The Day-Asva-"Futurists Against the Ocean" (2005)

The Album Of The Day is "Futurists Against the Ocean" by Asva.

Review:

For those who are paying attention to the doom metal scene, Futurist's Against the Ocean sells itself without one note being heard. Just look at who is involved and their pedigree: G. Stuart Dahlquist from Sunn 0))) on bass, B.R.A.D. from Burning Witch on drums and vocals, and Trey Spruance from Mr. Bungle on guitar, piano, and tubular bells. Rounding out the lineup is John Schuller from Master Musicians of Bukkake on guitar, Jessika Kenney from Gamelan Pacifica on vocals, and Troy Swanson on organ. If that was not enough to get the salivary glands pumping, Billy Anderson is behind the producer's desk like he was for High on Fire, Sleep, and Melvins. For those familiar with the names, Asva's sound should come as no surprise. But where other avant-metal supergroups (Fantômas, for example, or Tomahawk) don't deliver on their promise, Asva takes a glorious heavy racket, removed from the regular tropes of the doom scene enough to make both this group and this album something really special. The opening track, "Kill the Dog, Tie Them Up, Then Take the Money," is the most conventional track, moving at a glacial pace, with guitars inching from one note to the next, almost as if the metallic drone of the amps were playing through the guitars, and not the other way around. But by track three, "Fortune," the ambience has taken over, and the metal melts away. Droning organ, loping bass, and spiders-on-the-fretboard guitar scrapings set the scene for Kenney's vocals. More operatic (think Diamanda Galás) than tortured (like Khanate's Alan Dubin), Kenney's pure tones are easier on the ear than the scene-standard barked whisper/growling. This leads right into the epic closer, "By the Well of Living and Seeing," which melds the ambience of "Fortune" and the droning assault of "Kill the Dog" to Kenney's multi-tracked chanting vocals and a guitar straight out of an Ennio Morricone score. It is a perfect summation of the album, and Asva's sound in general: operatic ambient western doom metal, to pin words on it. Recommended heartily for those interested in the avant-metal scene. (James Mason, All Music Guide)

Track Listing:

01. Kill the Dog, Tie Them Up, Then Take the Money
02. Beyonsense
03. Fortune
04. By the Well of Living and Seeing

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